Why not AmigaOS4 for x86 Platforms?

[DonnyEMU]

BigBenAussie wrote:
We don't need custom chips or great graphics chipsets or even a speedy motherboard if we get Cell tech on a PowerPC chip in an Amiga. It won't work in a PC(at least for a while), so it'll be between PPC platforms like the Amiga and Apple, and with a bit of luck we could be the first desktop system to utilise it. Cell tech is probably going to blow us away and even the latest 3d Graphics cards will have a hard time catching up. We're talking raytraced realtime graphics now.

I once said AmigaOS should be ported to XBox2....well, methinks XBox2 is in for a rather nasty surprise when PS3 featuring cell tech comes out.... Port AmigaOS to PS3 maybe...but if the cell tech is on a PPC chip...then we can get back in the game....and the rest of the A1 mobo will make no difference.

Then all we need to do is stack our uA1s and.....We'll take over the world... MWAHAHAHA!!! Wait....If my TV has a Cell PPC chip on it.....and my PDA....and my Cell/Mobile phone....and my Microwave oven......Errr...and its driven by my Amiga.....Then that's a lot of extra processing power!!! Hey, if its all connected then we very well could take over the world literally.....But maybe I shouldn't stand too close to the microwave either.

Okay maybe I am getting a little old here, but I remember being on some board a few years ago and some dude was up on there promoting a "transputer" and how it's processing power was gonna make the Amiga the most powerful computing platform on the earth.. They ended up not having a market and their wild claims only came to fruition on the Atari ST..

Also, what happened with cellular technology on IRIX (SGI's Unix).. Well it's kinda disappeared off the radar screen..

Moral of the Story: Don't get hyped about a technology until you see it making an industry impact.. Chances are all you will be left with is hype..

Now talk about useable technology.. Does the Amiga have a PCI-Express motherboard with dual SLI graphics cards.. Probably not.. But I do hear AROS runs on it..

[DonnyEMU]

terminator wrote:

Just how long do you think it would survive in the MS sandbox?

It would be dead in minutes. Who in their right mind would waste time developing for an x86 version of OS4 when they may as well just release it for Windows.

Why would anyone buy anything for the x86 version of OS4, when they can buy almost anything at the local pc superstore, today.  Not 18 months from now.

People who keep whining on about this x86 issue just don't see the big picture.  

So an A1 costs more than a low end PC.  Well, that's the price of admission.  Don't like the price? Well, you are not obligated to buy a ticket.

I simply don't believe this, for several reasons..

1) the Apple Mac and MacOS (in it's various problems) have been around and continue to live in the face of overwhelming  Windows competition... Mac games most of the times come out later than windows, but still sell profitably.

2) The original Amiga 1000 sold a ton of machines before the   "low cost" version came out (i.e. the A500) and was positioned very well as a business and creative home solution and it was priced well above the Apple's and IBMs of the time. It wasn't until Atari with the ST came out and started UNDERCUTTING them that they released the A500..

3) Apple must think there is a market still there on the low end too, to release a "new" low end machine..

4) Why did people buy Amiga software in the first place over the other machines out there? It probably wasn't the revolutionary market. You can have the best hardware in the world and it won't sell without software behind it..  The simple fact is that it sold because of what the software let the machine do. Small time developers who weren't writing for the platforms of the day were gravitating towards it.. This could happen again, if the OS can still generate some unique software.

5)Did you ever buy Amiga software in anywhere but a mail order or a place that sold software for other machines? Probably not.. There is a reason for this..


I think people would look for an alternative platform that's  different from what they use at work, if the software was unique enough in a solution.. Also I think if AmigaOS ran on standard hardware, people might see it as a good alternative (provided the software support was there, which could happen over time). While people don't wanna change their hardware (that's why they may not be an A1) they are more likely to change their software if it works better..

[DonnyEMU]

Karlos wrote:

dammy wrote:
by Karlos on 2005/1/26 17:59:19

f it had gone x86, then great, I would have saved money too.

Then what do you call AROS, chop liver?

Dammy
TeamAROS

I have downloaded AROS periodically and taken it for a spin on the old PC. And I have to confess, it's about as much fun as one can have with x86 :-)

However, and don't take it personally but for me, AROS is not AmigaOS. It is source compatible and I do intend to code on it at some point but I prefer to wait until it has matured further. Also, I want to see where the OS is going as opposed to just where it has been. In this regard, I feel AROS and AmigaOS will diverge considerably. So, which route to follow? For me, that depends on which of the two is presently the most compatible.

It's probably not a good quantifiable reason, but one of the reasons I feel more of a connection with OS4 is that it already runs on my classic PPC, which has several bootable versions of AmigaOS. It runs the old 3.x applications (well the 680x0 ones), even the hardware banging ones, without UAE , as well as the newer OS4 native ones. I appreciate that the A1 does not have this level of compatibility, but it will always be more compatible with existing software than AROS (that is, until, AROS develops some kind of internal 680x0 emulation).

This leads me to the question just HOW compatible is OS/4 with old Amiga software.. I know that OS 3.9 enabled some PPC compatibility, but honestly to me emulation is emulation. Whether you have to run it through software or some OS later.. If you were to run a "classic" mac application on OS X it would load an entire copy of the old Mac OS just to run that application. At the chip level the PowerPC really has nothing in common with the 680x0. Most people today run a version of "UAE" just to be compatible with applications for compatiblity with old custom chips.

The issue for me with Aros is no longer does it run on a network or is it compatible? The issue is completeness of existing features like wanderer. I have already a machine waiting dedicated to AROS, and source compatiblity is good enough as long as it inspires a new generation of software.

So far AmigaOS4 has been out in one form or another (not the final release) and I have yet to see a lot of cool new software. You always have to give these things about a year to happen, but I am happy with my amd64 windows box until that happens. When I actually see new software for it, I probably will buy one.. However I am not convinced that speedwise and hardware coolness wise it, that it's anywhere as nice as the intel hardware I own..

I think for PC hardware lovers AROS is the trojan horse necessary to raise their "Amiga consciousness" and people will like it in some instances even better than Windows. Certainly for what it does the price is right..

I think Amiga folks need to get over their "mac envy" and see modern cpus (even Intel ones) for what they are just tools.. Even with Altivec, no one is gonna convince me I am gonna get better performance out of that than an equally expensive intel-compatible system..

I sound like I am trolling here, but someone needs really to do an evaluation with just how compatible an A1 is with "classic Amiga" before they suggest anything about how compatible AROS is to "classic Amiga".. How much of that classic software is also still out there for sale? I am sorry but I am not a fanboy of the A1 and REFUSE to give it, more respect until I see more native software (out for sale on store shelves). I would also see a model that's even competitive with even current low-end intel boxes price-wise..

I would like to see Eyetech selling something other than a cheap low-end crap sound card like the Vibra 16 for the A1. Why even bother? The (CMI based)AC'97 sound built into the A1 models is much nicer. I think you have to position a machine correctly, and things like Radeon 7000 support and sounds cards that are so 3-4 years ago need to change. Someone has to go out there and write software and maybe even sell drivers that support more modern hardware not just things that are an easy port from the open source community. Until this happens the machine will always gather a certain "lacklusterness" even though it has the "Amiga" brand..

PS @Previous poster, does OS 4 (a release version?) really run on your classic PPC Amiga (with accelerator)?? Me thinks for most people out there this is a no, and OS4 on acclerated classic Amiga hardware isn't supported..

[DonnyEMU]

I am only replying to this because I wrote the original material he was replying to, so I don't want my points misunderstood..

DavidF215 wrote:


You know, I went into CompUSA one time to check on MacOS game software. They had all the games I would want, and they didn't have all of the Mac games. This arguement about no games or no software doesn't really float very well. How many Office applications does one need for biz apps to type a document and create a spreadsheet; an office suite along with Solitaire is adequate for the majority of Corporate America, and I know because I've provided tech support in Corporate America for several years. Most don't even know how to use MS-Office to its potential, and the majority only need a dumb terminal with downloaded apps and a network drive to save their work (but this is another thread all together).

I agree so far..

Yeah, I do recall that an A2000/A2500 was about $2000 when it first came out, and the A4000 was a bit more when it came out, and it along with the Video Toaster, helped to propel the platform until its current barely surviving state. So someone make a modern Video Toaster equivalent for AmigaOne (and compatibles) so when AmigaOS finally works on a G5, I'll have a good machine for video editting.

Right now with under $1000 and adobe premiere you can do broadcast quality digital video and some could argue you could even do it on that $399 dell.. If that's possible it would be possible to do it all in software on an AmigaOne without having toaster hardware.. You might check out VHI Studio from www.iospirit.de

So does Dell if they sale a low grade PC for $399 (after rebates, of course). So an A1200 would still sell well with an 040 or 060 processor.

I am sorry, I just don't believe this is the case, even if you could run that CPU at that price, you are comparing CPU horsepower of a model T to a jet engine.. There are many reasons with specs that people won't continue to buy something with a 68k cpu.. (unless it becomes a tv game joystick). You really haven't spent enough time on PC hardware to make that conjecture stick.. Even, if you run AmigaOS thru UAE it would be many times faster on that low end PC..

It was simple, had good software (even though there wasn't a lot of software for the Amiga--same "not a lot of software" argument as often applied to MacOS), had a target markets (such as art and entertainment), it had true multitasking, lots of simultaneous colors on display, and some other advantages which Amiga owners know about.

Actually if you look at the Amazing Computing yearly product guide, you would find more products (literally thousands) in it than on the Mac or PC. The thing is the companies selling it were way smaller and couldn't get the shelf space. So beause you couldn't go to a software store and buy anything but a few games really made it look like something it wasn't. Did you see Microsystems Excellence! at the time available at anywher but an amiga dealer or mail order? Companies like Electronics Boutique sold just games because it probably would have cut into the other manufacturers business software that was there...

So I really think that's a big misnomer that Amiga didn't have the software..

I bought my A1200 from a catalog because it was cheaper than going to the store to buy it. I did buy the software from my local Amiga dealer in Springfield, MO at the time. Then I went down to my hometown of Corpus Christi and spoke with the Amiga dealer there, who told me I got ripped off; I was not happy then.

Dealers hated mail order undercutting, it made the whole Amiga market very unprofitable for the small dealers who were trying to survive who didn't sell in large quantities. Commodore gave deep discounts if you bought a lot of machines every quarter because they liked their previous "64 style sales"... The mail order places really cheapened the feel of buying a machine, while Apple and IBM policed their dealer channels very carefully..

My above comment about Corporate America is a good reply for this, too. Entire departments could still use an A1200/040 (or even Pentium3) for their work machine. I'd pick the A1200 because it boots faster than a P3 with Windows on it. Give them an A1200, a mouse, and an LCD monitor, and they have a computer workstation including keyboard. Would sure beat those dump door stop CPU tower hogs. I would have bought A1200's when I was IT manager at a company in Fort Worth had they still been manufactured at the time.

Actualy 3rd world countries could still use the A1200 computer. An A1200 with an 030 would still be cheap to manufacture for less than $200-$300, wouldn't it?

Sorry, things are so much faster now than they used to be and everything is automated.. Networking, multi-user improvements, systems management would be neessary to support IT organizations.. You can upgrade even a celeron to a 64 bit computer for about $300 per station these days..

Better software was one of the good points about Amiga. It's one of the reasons I bought an A1200.

I have an a1200 an A3000 and have owned every Amiga at one time or another.. I have even worked for a dealer.. The PC and Mac have moved so far along to support business environments and networking, that even OS 4 needs major improvements to fit properly in a multi-station environment. In a single workstation environment, maybe (with a competitive cpu, graphics, etc. (sounds like AmigaOne or Aros to me)..

[DonnyEMU]

DavidF215 wrote:

( snip, snip...)
....

True. But it's like that today with x86 equipment. I agree that it undercut the dealers.

So all in all, what most are saying in this thread is to use AROS on cheap x86 hardware for basic Amiga work (word processing, spreadsheets, database, etc--do such applications run on AROS?) and buy a Peg2 with MorphOS and a free LinuxOS for a modern Amiga system since A1 isn't modernized enough.

No not at all. I am suggesting if you want an Amiga style operating system and you won't leave your x86 hardware for a G4, then you might find AROS the answer. Question: Is there native apps for either OS from 3rd party developers?

You are asking if such applications run on AROS, I am quite confident that they will as development continues and the fact that it's source code compatible with 3.1 is quite amazing.

If you haven't tried AROS-Max and loaded and run all the programs that have already been ported from Aminet and Fish, then you should. It will convince you of this x86 OS's worthiness. While it's not an Amiga (not binarily 68K (without UAE) or PPC compatible) it's very capable, and with the right hardware probably faster than an AmigaOne..

My point about the OS in general being modernized enough has to do with the points I already made. Samba is a nice thing for both OS4 and AROS, but we really do need a true multi-user solution. This might be true of AROS as well. It needs to be addressed before it's put on a big network, but for now it might be a nice stand alone server/workstation.. Network admins usually don't like machines that don't have some kind of SNMP and remote administration or something they have to go to a command line that takes time to configure.

So with the Peg moving to Linux, and MorphOS stalled, if you want an Amiga style OS, you have the options of a real AmigaOne or AROS, neither give you previous chipset compatibility without emulation..

After using AROS on my existing hardware, I can't see myself  moving to a G4/G5. I think many users feel this way here in the USA and with cheap fast commodity hardware available, I can run WHATEVER OS I want on it.  If Amiga decided to make the real AmigaOS available on x86, I'd probably pre-order at whatever cost in full just to see it developed...

On Hardware:

I worked from 1985-1991 for an Amiga Dealer. The difference in the computer market today vs then is hardware is now sold as a commodity wherever you go.. You spec out the machine you want, they find the lowest price. Machines are sold on price alone these days. You don't go in expecting support or any specialized hand holding or specialized solutions. If you buy a specialized system then you are buying from a system integrator.. Back in the days of Commodore-Amiga dealers this wasn't the case..


-Don